32

CARPENTER GATHERED WITH the small group of Royal Marines in a sterile conference room at a training establishment far down the Thames Estuary. They were all dressed in jeans or foul-weather gear and with a variety of headgear- baseball caps, woolen watch caps, and navy blue yachting caps with yacht club insignia. They looked like the crew of a world-class racing yacht-young, fit, and eager-as long as one didn’t know how quickly and quietly they could kill.

General Sir Ewan Southby-Tailyour stood at the foot of the conference table, manipulating transparencies on a projector. His first was taken from an admiralty nautical chart. “Now, you see here the position of the island in relation to the coast and the Thames Estuary,” he said. “We’ll have about a six-hour sail with the wind giving us a nice close reach, and in bright sunshine for most of the afternoon. The met office tells us conditions will deteriorate rapidly after sunset: the wind will back to the southwest and increase to around force seven, giving us a cross-swell and a very dark night, which should suit our purposes admirably.” He switched to a satellite photograph in which Sealand filled the entire frame.

“Now you see the landing, just here.” He pointed on the transparency with a pencil. “It’s certainly not what one would call a harbor, but it has some shelter from the southwesterlies, so we shouldn’t have much more than a light chop inside the point. There’s a dock, here.

“Now the buildings: There are six Portocabins, all identical from the outside, and I am indebted to Carpenter and her people for supplying us with some intelligence about the interiors. The southernmost is sleeping quarters and bathrooms; the next up the line is a mess hall and lounge for the inhabitants. These accommodations should be quite comfortable for them, since the island has a standing population of eight to ten. Provisions and mail are brought over from an East Anglian port twice a week, but never at night, which suits us.

“The third building in line is the computer installation and some offices, and the fourth houses the cellular telephone equipment and offices. The other two are purely for utility-storage, tools, et cetera. It is the third building, here, that interests us, but we will place guards on buildings one, two, and four as well, so that our workers are not disturbed.

“Carpenter’s intelligence tells us that there is one man each on duty in the computer and telephone buildings, so they should be easy to deal with. Sergeant Simpson, please show us how we will deal with them.”

A thick-set man in his early thirties stood up and placed one end of a yard-long tube in his mouth, pointing it at a dartboard at the other end of the room. His cheeks puffed out, there was a whfft! noise and a dart struck the board at dead center. Carpenter was impressed.

“Very good,” Sir Ewan said, walking to the board and extracting the dart. He held it up for the group to see. “Since our orders are not to damage any of the inhabitants, this will be our means of subduing any who require subduing. It is, in fact, a syringe, as well as a dart, and it will hold up to two cc’s of whatever we care to put into it. In this case, Carpenter’s people have supplied a liquid which they call ”Sleepytime Down South‘ or just “Sleepytime,” for short.

“The injection of this fluid causes nearly immediate unconsciousness for a period of two to four hours, depending on how much is administered, but the really sweet thing about this drug is that, when the subject awakes, he has no memory of what occurred up to an hour before he received the dose. He will believe that he simply fell asleep.”

Sir Ewan held up a shorter tube. “This is a compressed-air version of the sergeant’s blowpipe; each of you will carry one and two doses of the drug. Two of our team will carry sawn-off shotguns with beanbag loads that are the equivalent of a strong punch. In the event that it becomes necessary to use these, the preferred target is the abdomen. You are not to aim at the heads of these people because of the risk of breaking their necks.

“I must stress most strongly that no team member is to carry any other weapon, not a knife or even a truncheon, and should you have to counteract violence, you will use only those means prescribed and you will employ restraint. It is not our task to cause the death or significant injury of anyone. I know that goes against your training, but there it is.

“Your task is to land on the island unseen, enter building three unheard, let Carpenter and her bloke do their work undetected, clean up after yourselves, and depart the island unremembered.

“Because a higher authority has ordered me not to land on the island, I will stand offshore with the yacht, with one crew to aid me, and will receive the dinghy on its return to the yacht.”

He looked at his wristwatch. “You will board the yacht in forty minutes, and we will sail in forty-five. At no time will more than three hands appear on deck in daylight, and only when I need more than one. The rest of the time you can all sit below with your filthy magazines and drink Bovril and cocoa, which you are all very good at.” There was a low chuckle from the group. “Any questions?”

There were none.

“Good. Take your seasick pills now, if you need them, and assemble on the dock in thirty-five minutes. Dismissed.”

The group filed out, leaving Southby-Tailyour, Carpenter, and a young man from Carpenter’s firm called Roofer, who would do any required computer work.

“They seem like a good lot,” Carpenter said.

Sir Ewan sat down beside her. “They’re razor-sharp, all of them,” he said. “The creme de la creme.” He looked at the computer technician. “You ever been aboard a yacht, young fellow?”

“No, sir,” the man said.

Sir Ewan placed two small pills on the table. “Take these now,” he said, pushing a carafe and a glass toward him.

“What are they?” he asked.

“The pink one is phenergen, a child’s antihistamine, and the white one is ephedrine, a slight upper. Twenty-five milligrams of each prevents seasickness in nearly everyone. The Americans worked this out for their astronauts, to prevent motion sickness in space.”

“I don’t think I’ll need them,” Roofer said.

“Shut up and take them,” Carpenter said softly.

He did. “Is there a bathroom nearby?” he asked.

“Next door,” Sir Ewan said, jerking a thumb.

Roofer left.

“You ready for this?” Sir Ewan asked.

Carpenter smiled. “Oh, yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been on this sort of jaunt. I’ve missed it.”

“My boys are disappointed that they won’t get to throttle or knife anybody,” Sir Ewan said.

“Poor babies.”

“Quite,” Sir Ewan replied.

33

KATE WATCHED WILL as he tied his black bow tie in one smooth, continuous motion. It always came out perfectly.

“I always meant to ask you: Where did you learn to do that?” she asked.

“Cary Grant movie,” he replied, slipping into his waistcoat.

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not. I think it was Indiscreet, but I’m not sure. I finally got it right on about the two-hundredth attempt.”

“And how old were you when you did this?”

“Forty,” he replied.

She pinched him sharply on his ass.

“All right, nineteen.” He got into his dinner jacket, turned around, and slipped his arms around her waist. “Now tell me, how is it that you got ready before I did? This has never happened before.”

“I had a head start,” she said. “When you were on the phone with the British PM.”

“Oh, yes.”

“What did he want?”

“I’m not sure I should share that with the director of Central Intelligence. Or are you asking as the first lady?”

“Whatever will get you to cough it up.”